What did you think Star Trek fans would make of a woman captain�?

Well, I knew it would be controversial because the gentleman preceding me had been so successful. Next Generation, was hugely successful, not only as a franchise but for the actor himself.

Of course, the young male demographic has always been the target demographic for Star Trek, the men ageing fifteen to about twenty-five or thirty, a very tough market to appeal to.

You then introduce a middle-aged woman - I shouldn�t say it was middle-aged, I was thirty-eight at the time, I�m very middle-aged now, I�m old now - and I think the great philosophical question which I posed myself before anybody else had a chance was to see a woman in a captain�s chair who could anthropologically speaking be their mother, and they would have to make a very difficult - both creative and philosophical - adjustment to find that appealing. So my seduction of that group took, I think, about two to three years.

The women were on board from day one, and their attendant daughters, which has been I think the most supportive factor for myself and for Janeway. So I had no problem there, and I think over the years the men settled down, said to themselves, �Oh, she is commanding the ship.�